It wouldn't matter. The current administration is from a party whose platform is as anti-labor as their opposition was under Woodrow Wilson. Even if we had a strong Federal government right now, it would be interested in aiding Amazon, not it's workforce.
As it is I fully expect to hear talking points that "responsible" workers wouldn't strike or try to organize, or that there should be a law against unionization during national emergencies.
actually, i wouldn't be surprised if trump tries to go left of biden in a few key areas if only to try to win the next election. i think he's under immense pressure due to mishandling the pandemic - he's not polling well at all, not that that means everything - and i suspect he's not above wildly shaking up policy in order to pick up votes, esp. in the critical swing states.
his party isn't in a position to throw up a challenger so the Rs are stuck with him, from my point of view: if desperate enough, who knows what he'll try?
Biden will stick with the party and it's "obligations" no matter what, so you've got a really good point here. Trump could punch low and swing left, where biden has no footing. Maybe maybe, this could catalyze a general republican swing to the far left?
This sounds like a circus. Not saying that it's better anywhere else in essence, but in US politics the political words meanings have been absolutely butchered.
I mean, is that out of character though? I was going to vote for bernie but if trump extends federally funded healthcare to everyone and abolishes private health insurance (which, as far as I know, wouldn't negatively impact his financial supporters as much as bidens), hell yeah I'd vote for him. One issue, done deal.
Trump hates Bezos enough to try to shut USPS to get to him. I'm sure he'd love to get the double whammy of screwing over Bezos and a boost from working class voters in swing states.
If that's how he feels personally, his appointments to the National Labor Relations Board don't show it. And if it would take legislation, he'd never get it past Mitch McConnell.
Your first point aside, Republicans have been trying to privatize the USPS for decades (though it's definitely the case that many Democrats are in favor of this too for whatever reason). The White House has been actively rejecting the idea of providing aid to the USPS over the last month or two despite the fact that the situation has demolished their revenues.
I think it's at least quite plausible that the WH could try to do this since it aligns with their priorities, and that McConnell would be fine with it. The House, probably not.
Trump has plenty of employees in his businesses, and support from lots of business folks. I would expect Trump to cut his nose off to spite his face at any moment ... but not if it meant using the federal government to side with a labor movement like this. He has likely made that choice already with his appointments.
> Trump has plenty of employees in his businesses, and support from lots of business folks.
On that topic:
For some, it was a plainly calculated choice. Thomas Peterffy, a billionaire who owned the largest estate in Greenwich, donated to Trump but never pretended to admire him. “When the choice is between two ideologies, then it’s a luxury to dwell on the personalities of the candidates,” he told me. “It’s a luxury that we cannot afford.” Peterffy, who made his fortune as a pioneer in digital trading, said that the choice was between “a high degree of government regulation or a diminished amount of government regulation, because, basically, that’s how the U.S. will get to socialism—increasing government regulation.”
> The current administration is from a party whose platform is as anti-labor as their opposition was under Woodrow Wilson
Is that true? Increased tariffs, renegotiated trade deals (increased tariffs), attempting to tighten immigration, lowering taxes on repatriation of cash. Those are all pro worker.
It is true yes - though it's also true that recently both sides of the aisle have been anti-labor. The trade deal renegotiations didn't focus on or accomplish good changes to keep labour local and, while I'm not wholly against tariffs tax changes have wiped out any local investment motivations tariffs were supporting.
Lastly, the repatriation of cash was a loss for everyone - companies that skirted tax laws got a gift in being able to reclaim a lot of cash they had been unable to access due to dodging taxes while also paying a much reduced rate... And I think that action happening again so soon is just a clear signal to companies to avoid actually bringing any money into the country until they can get a tax holiday to get it in for free - it's like your kid eating the cookie jar and you saying "Well, I'm going to dock your allowance thirty percent this week... And I will refill the cookie jar but don't do that again!" - we rewarded these companies for skirting tax laws by letting them skirt some more tax laws while wagging a finger and saying "Naughty naughty!"
Given the current situation where most production is offshored, this only hurts consumers in the short and middle term as there literally is no production capacity for most of the stuff that is produced in China (and other offshore countries), so the tariffs will be passed on 1:1 to consumers. To properly incentivize local production, tariffs would have to be so high that sum(offshore cost + tariffs) at least equals sum(cost of local production + extra cost of compliance with environmental regulation).
> attempting to tighten immigration
Did you ever look at which jobs have the most demand for immigrant (both legal and illegal) labor? It's mostly back-breaking labor: farms, hotels and bars, construction sites, medical (nurses and their unqualified helper staff). If tighter immigration would work out to help local workers, then Germany would not face a severe shortage of nurses or of farm workers or the UK a shortage of just about anything. The farmers complain "we can't get local labor as they're unwilling/unproductive or don't apply at all", but they never bothered to rise wages and working conditions (have you ever seen reports about what they call "housing" for the Romanian and other Eastern European slave workers?)... in the end, the "(illegal) immigration is killing our jobs" whine is only bullshit, it's underpayment that kills the jobs.
> lowering taxes on repatriation of cash
The mega-rich don't use that cash even when it is repatriated, at least not in ways that benefit the employees who made the riches in the first place! The only way I'd accept tax lowerings on cash repatriation is when said cash is at least partially redistributed to the employees.
I disagree. Almost anything made overseas can be made in the US, it's vast place. If you raise tariffs, that's going to hurt the largest international corporations and stimulate the local small to medium sized companies. Prices for goods would go up, but so would the demand for labor. Also, goods would be of higher quality and there would be less disposable consumer-culture, a win for everyone.
> Did you ever look at which jobs have the most demand for immigrant
Yes, I have. These 'back-breaking' labor jobs are also the most underpaid.
> it's underpayment that kills the jobs
I don't see how you can fail to realize the two are intimately related.
> I disagree. Almost anything made overseas can be made in the US, it's vast place.
No it cannot, at least not in the foreseeable future as even for something as stupid and simple as a McDonalds Happy Meal throwaway toy there is no domestic supply chain in the US or most other Western countries. Corona makes rebuilding that supply chain even more impractical as you would need many, many dozens of billions of dollars (or euros) as an upfront investment and still thanks to higher labor costs and cost of compliance with regulations (environmental and labor) this won't be competitive for a long time.
> If you raise tariffs, that's going to hurt the largest international corporations and stimulate the local small to medium sized companies
Most "large international companies" are US-based. Also, large corporations can choose to at least partially suck up tariffs (either by cross-subsidizing or by cutting profit margins) and make up the loss by scale, while a small/medium trade company cannot easily do that.
> Prices for goods would go up, but so would the demand for labor.
That's true, but no rational economist or politician believes that tariffs are here to stay. They're a reflection of Trump's ideas rather than a recognized modern economic policy. Even then, Trump's goal was to combat China's policies, not create a long term system of import and export taxes to protect American workers.
As a result, there hasn't been significant industrial investment in the US. That's one of the problems we've had with Covid: the PPE, medications, and ventilators are all manufactured overseas. We've had to retool our auto manufacturers to spin up ventilator production. You'd be crazy to invest in US manufacturing since the tariffs look about as permanent as a White House press secretary. You know you'll be undercut and put out of business in just a few years.
> Even then, Trump's goal was to combat China's policies, not create a long term system of import and export taxes to protect American workers.
Well, if you consider he canceled the adoption of the TPP, the Paris Climate Accord, and negotiated the MCA agreement, I'd say it was a series of long term changes.
Naturally, there's only so much the executive branch can do in isolation.
> You'd be crazy to invest in US manufacturing since the tariffs look about as permanent as a White House press secretary.
Yes but all those things are also fairly safe in terms of his other demographics. Trump's brand of populism strikes me as being all about surface gestures.
Has anything he's done for workers also disadvantaged his rich donors?
Forcing work during a pandemic that might kill people without providing them PPE or making changes to operations is the literal height of insanity.
Amazon has been a subsidized american corporation servicing chinese interests for 2 decades; the US goverment recieves hundreds of billion in chinese bond purchases a year and for the privelage of having this subsidy the Federal government the federal government in turn provides a subsidty to amazon in the form of forging anti-trust prosecution against amazon for running a retail division that ran a loss for 2 decades while prosecuting wal-mart.
End of the day, best way to handle this is to make an app for it. People run it on their phones which everyone has, and they co-ordinate and vote that way as a single block and as seperate groups.
As it is I fully expect to hear talking points that "responsible" workers wouldn't strike or try to organize, or that there should be a law against unionization during national emergencies.